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> Pet P.i.s - Their Message? Don't Give Up In Despair
Furkidlets' Mom
post Oct 15 2008, 02:22 PM
Post #1





Group: Pet Lovers
Posts: 1,208
Joined: 21-June 05
From: Canada
Member No.: 961



Okay, so THIS is why I personally never like to see people give up in their search for their missing furbabies.

An article in the Toronto Globe & Mail:

Pet PIs ignore snickers, hold on to hope
Rebecca Dube
Toronto Globe and Mail



KITCHENER, Ontario – When someone suggested to Deborah Maguire that she call a pet detective to help search for her missing Chihuahua, she thought they were joking.

“I thought, ‘Oh, my God, that’s a movie – that’s ridiculous,’ ” Maguire recalls.

But desperate for something to do, or at least something to tell her heartbroken children, she spoke with Ronda Fraser, a pet detective in Kitchener.

Fraser immediately offered to drive to Ottawa. Maguire thought it was time for a reality check: Lola had disappeared during a massive snowstorm a month earlier. Tiny dog plus 30 inches of snow equals …

“The dog is dead,” Maguire said sadly.

“The dog is dead when you give up,” Fraser responded. “So, are you going to give up today?”

Well, no, Maguire thought, not when you put it that way. Thus inspired, “Operation: Find Lola” was launched.

Move over, Ace Ventura. Pet detectives have gone from punch line to profession. OK, they’re still a punch line, but for those willing to endure the snickers, their services are in high demand.

When Fraser started pet detecting as a hobby last summer – keeping her “day job” with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs – she advertised on only one Web site and expected to get one or two calls a year. Instead, she’s worked on 40 cases, and estimates that 75 percent of the lost pets were reunited with their owners.

“You have to think like a dog,” Fraser says.

She tracks lost pets with assistance from her dog, Jive, a standard poodle. (Don’t laugh – originally bred as a water-retrieval dog, standard poodles are ranked second in canine intelligence, right after border collies.) If called within two weeks of a disappearance, when the scent is still fresh, Fraser will start where the missing pet was last seen. On other cases, such as Lola’s, Fraser consults on the phone, offering advice on how to search animal shelters, where to put up signs and common hiding places for animals.

Perhaps her main role, she says, is simply taking people seriously and encouraging them to keep looking.

“I think people give up too early,” she says. “A lot of times it’s just giving people hope.”

Fraser doesn’t accept money for her services, though she says she might start charging for on-site tracking.

Other pet detectives don’t share her reticence, charging anywhere from $100 for a phone consultation to $1,000 a day for tracking – and walking a fine line between serving a needy market and taking advantage of desperate people.

So can anyone with a bit of free time call themselves a “Sherlock Bones”?

Well, yes. (Although that name has been trademarked by a fellow in California, so he might object.) It’s buyer beware when it comes to pet PIs.

The two pet detectives working in Canada, Fraser and Vicky Vaughan of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, are both certified as missing-animal-response technicians by the first pet-detective school in North America, Missing Pet Partnership, run by former police detective and K9 trainer Kat Albrecht. Fraser traveled to California for the 5 1/2 -day, $625 training course, which covers everything from animal behavior and wildlife tracking to grief counseling, probability theory and identifying animal bloodstains.

The training paid off for Lola.

The day after Maguire’s family distributed lost-dog fliers designed by Fraser, they received a phone call from a house about three blocks from where Lola disappeared. The homeowners thought there might be a dog hiding under their deck.

Maguire’s husband and children peered into the darkness beneath the deck and called Lola’s name. After a few minutes, they saw movement, and Lola emerged – starving and skittish, but miraculously alive. She’d been trapped by the snow, and survived by cuddling up to the foundation.

“Had it not been for the persistence of Ronda, we would never have gotten her back,” Maguire says. “She would have died under that deck.”


--------------------
"I dropped a tear in the ocean. The day you find it is the day I will stop missing you."

[center]~Anonymous~


<div align="center">"Not flesh of my flesh, Nor bone of my bone,
But still miraculously my own.
Never forget for a single minute,
You didn't grow under my heart - but in it"[/center]

~Fleur Conkling Heylinger~


>^..^< >^..^< >^..^< >^..^< >^..^<


"For one species to mourn the death of another is a noble thing"

~Aldo Leopold~

<span style='font-size:9pt;line-height:100%'>Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage. ~Sri Aurobindo

Spay now or pay later, the interest is killing us.


</span></div>
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